I have an Intel 40gb G2. Now I would like to update my laptop that I use mainly for work. I want to install XP on to the drive (Please no one say WHY XP you should use Win7). I plain to upgrade to Win7 down the road when some of the programs i use support Win7.

Now for the big question! What is the best SSD greater than or equal to 120gb and under $319. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Sandforce 1200 is the latest and greatest for SSD. I'm looking for fastest read and fastest write possible for the price. And something that has XP software to use the Trim support feature.

I have been looking at the OWC Mercury Extreme pro, but I've seen some reviews and its not the fastest. Thanks!

Have you tried running XP in a virtual machine? At work we use Oracle VirtualBox to do Red Hat Linux development on Windows XP machines. Never had any problems running Red Hat in a virtual machine. We also just started doing Android development in a virtual machine running Ubuntu. If I had Windows 7 I would try XP in a virtual machine for you but I haven't upgraded yet.

Yea, I've thought about running it in a VM and I do have a few VM's on my machine now, but I don't want to share space on an SSD for 2 OS's. If i could afford a 240gb..lol maybe.. I'm also running a good number of test DB's on this machine as well.

I just pulled the trigger on the G.Skill Phoenix Pro with sandforce sf-1200 chip for 279.99 @ the Egg. It thought about the Intel but I couldn't drop down to 80gb and the 160 is out of my price range. I like my 40gb drive reads, but the write leaves a little to be disired. The indilinx chip is good, but I like the specs on the sandforce sf-1200 with it's dura last tech (wear leveling).

I've read a lot of reviews from mac users and they were good. I say mac because it doesn't support trim command like XP. I've already purchased win7 pro x64 a few weeks ago to test all the software myself, but i have one SQL server running sql 2000, and i'm worried it won't let me install query analyzer or the manager. I guess i'll see. hehehe Thanks guys for all the help!

Floopies arnt chepaer than CDs per GB, i guess i should have added in cheaper per GB,

if i could put 600MBs on a floppy for 1/2 the cost of CDs then i would probably be doing it even if it was slower, however the point is almost moot as cds are so low cost the difference is in cents which kind of defeats the price issue altogether in which case the only decision point left is convenience and performance, if a SSD cost 10$ and a HD cost $1 id buy the SSD, however were talking much larger figures

so lat me qualify my original statement that HDs will always be here while they are margin-ably cheaper than SSDs per storage volume AND their cost has not become completely trivial